The persons who engage in this work are as much social workers as those in any traditionally philanthropic field and have simply followed persons whom they are trying to help into situations which philanthropy did not formerly consider to be its business. Philanthropy has long taken an interest in jails and reform schools, it has only quite recently followed into court anyone still unconvicted. This it does in the case of children and is beginning to do for some classes of adults. The social worker of the adult court is the probation officer, a representative of voluntary chivalry toward the defendant, standing in the very stronghold of implacable justice. The contrast between the points of view of criminal law and social work is clearly put by a judge in describing the function of the juvenile court. “The inquiry (in the juvenile court) is not to determine whether the child is a criminal or not, but to determine its status in relationship to its need of the care and protection of the state. Being adjudged in need of such special care the state assumes its guardianship and oversight, always for the welfare of the child. The aims and methods of the courts which administer our criminal laws proceed upon an entirely different theory. Our penal laws are enacted for the purpose of promoting the happiness and well-being of society at large, and any who violate them are termed criminals and outlawed as unfit units of society. The penalty provided for under these laws is imposed with the end in view of deterring the offender from again violating his obligation to the body politic and also of deterring others who might be like-minded.”[27] In some other fields the introduction of the social worker simply adds a new sort of service to what is already given. The obligations of both the doctor and the medical social worker are to the welfare of the patient, but their work is complementary. Often the social worker has responsibilities no less than the doctor’s but her diagnosis is of a situation and its possible interference with the curative process the doctor prescribes. She must discover and change working conditions or personal habits that tend to defeat the doctor’s efforts. It is not a mere accident that this became the task of a social worker. It is not because it was no medical job and the charitably inclined were available for it. It is because of a certain characteristic of social work which is a direct result of the single minded address to the service of need--namely, a tendency to look upon people from no point of view but that of interest in their needs, of whatever sort those needs may be. This habit of taking a _synthetic_ view of their lives, if such an expression is permissible, gives exactly what was needed to complement the special and limited services of the doctor.